516 



great armies of continental Europe and England from time to time dur- 

 ing the periods of all the wars of the last few centuries. 



Glanders was imported into America at the close of the last century, 

 antl before the end of the first half of the present century had spread to 

 a considerable degree among the horses of the Middle and immediately 

 a-ljoining Southern States. This disease was unknown in Mexico until 

 carried there during the Mexican war by the badly diseased horses of 

 the United States Army. During the first half of the present century 

 a large school of veterinarians and medical men protested against the 

 contagious character of this disease, and prevailed by their opinion to 

 such an extent against the common opinion that several of the govern- 

 ments of Europe undertook a series of experiments to determine the 

 right between the contesting j^arties. 



At the veterinary school at Alfort, and at the farm of Lamirault in 

 France, several hundred horses which had passedexaminatiou as sound 

 had placed among them glandered horses under various conditions. 

 The results of these experiments proved conclusively the contagions 

 character of the disease. 



In 188L Professor Bouchard, of the faculty of medicine in Paris, as- 

 sisted by Drs. Capitau and Charrin, undertook a series of experiments 

 with matter taken from the farcy ulcer of a human being. They after- 

 ward continueil their experiments with matter taken from animals of 

 the equine genus. In 1883 these gentlemen presented the results of 

 their researches to the Academy, through Professors Bouley and Vul- 

 piam, conclusively demonstrating that the disease was caused by a bacte- 

 rium or low order of parasitic organism, which is capable of propagation 

 and reproduction of others of its own kind if placed in the proper media. 



When we come to study the etiology of glanders, the difference of sus- 

 ceptibility on the part of different species of animals, or even on the part 

 of individuals of the same species, and when we come to find proof of 

 the slow incubation and latent character of the disease as it exists in 

 certain individuals, we will understand how in a section of country 

 containing a number of glandered animals others can seem to contract 

 sind develop the disease without having apparently been exposed to 

 contagion. 



Etiology. — The contagious nature of glanders, in no matter what form 

 it appears, being to-day definitely demonstrated, we can recognize but 

 one cause for all cases, and that is contagion by means of the specific 

 virus of the disease. 



In studying the writings of the older authors on glanders, and the 

 works of those authors who contested the contagious nature of the dis- 

 ease, we find a large number of predisposing causes assigned as factors 

 in the development of the malady. 



While a virus from a case of glanders if inoculated into an animal of 

 the genus equus will inevitably produce the disease, we find a vast 

 difference in the contagious activity of the products of different cases 



